Marisacat

Antidote 22 October 2011

Harry Belafonte and Martin Luther King Jr from the site Madman posted.

And! as antidote to what I call, ‘Three Gorges Dam’ Martin. That travesty on the Mall.

Plus every time over the years I have wanted to post or refer to the phrase about “joining a burning house”, when I google pretty much all I find is the many references Belafonte has made to that particular truth over the years.

2) Barack Obama is apparently expressing willingness to junk big chunks of Sarbanes-Oxley in exchange for support for his jobs program. Business leaders are balking at creating new jobs unless Obama makes compliance with S-O voluntary for all firms valued at under $1 billion.

Here’s how to translate this move: companies are saying they can’t attract investment unless they can hide their financials from investors. So the CEOs and gazillionaires on Obama’s Jobs Council want the politically-vulnerable president to give them license to cook the books in exchange for support for his jobs program. From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

“All you’re going to do is have more fraud. The ultimate losers are going to be investors,” said Jeff Klink, a former federal prosecutor whose Gateway Center firm helps clients prevent and detect fraud.

If the financial crisis proved anything, it’s that Wall Street companies in particular have been serial offenders in the area of dishonest accounting and book-cooking. Sarbanes-Oxley is obviously no panacea, but removing it in exchange for a temporary, election-year job boost is exactly the kind of myopic, absurdly irresponsible shit that got us into this mess in the first place. For Obama to pull this in the middle of these protests is crazy.

Thanks for that Loco…I think Willie might be a real huiman, never mind his well publicized politics and weedy-ness but Sis tells me he bikes around her little town in Maui on ragged-ass tenspeed that’s as trashed as his guitar

A narcisisst with a touch of megalomania never is pretty, and when such a fantastic douche faces terminal illness the pathetic attempts of creating some impotent version of immorality is not only uglier then the hemorrhoids in Hades ass but is patently more incredibly tiresome than Phoenix’s freeways during rush hour …Can you imagine him berating one of execs’ over the phone the day before he died? (I think that’s the gist of the e duHuff puff piece I glossed) Talk about not facing reality…

Well he REALLY did not face reality with the cancer, at all. I am not saying it’s easy… but alternative diets – as a CURE – and the like once you have an invasive cancer is just silly. And I am not fond of US medical protocols or what I call our “system”, at all… but sometimes for some things……….

I think the way he dealt with it from the beginning is indicative of his delusions of grandeur and overweening self-reard. IMO rejecting the surgery “cause he didn’t want to be violated” or “opened” is ridiculous. We’re talking life or death. I’m sure his physician was beyond fantastic,pro’lly one of the best in his field and most people who accept the preeminence of science (and not necessarily the infallible wisdom of western med or any given doc) would listen to an expert scientist or three and then go with the consensus. Especially when its a ez snip snip high percentage op. But not if you believe in your own omnipotence/omniscience. In the end I think he was as superstitious as anyone else, and his singularity merely that his blind-fai th was in his own (false, obviously) God-like-nature…
sucks to be mortal and human, but it happens to the best of us (never mind a self-deluded tool like jobs)

I think the whole “Steve figured out how to build a new television” is frantic hoopla. Trying to game – and goose – the market. They cannot make the 4s a better device or, at this point, strive for a better sales presentation than it is… no matter how many lines to buy it The Woz gets into and chats up the “volk”. (I read a tanscript of the conf call with Cook and a couple of others with market/Wall St media… geesh it was lame)

I am very superstitious but the core of it is not my belief in my goddessnessness. That’s for sure!

Well in the end, or the end of denial in his own healing abilities, was becoming a legal resident of TENN as I recall, to get on a smaller state UNOS list. Or so the story went. So… he got pierced no matter what.

[A]s the Occupy movement spread across the nation in recent weeks, MoveOn added a pop-up window on its website, asking readers to sign a petition supporting the “Occupy Wall Street” movement.

But many members of the Occupy movement in Oakland and beyond say such actions are too little, too late. They claim that MoveOn was silent in the early days of Occupy Wall Street when the mainstream media marginalized it, said Occupy protester Andy Susich.

“If they really cared about the movement, they could have brought us into the conversation early on,” Susich said. “But they didn’t and now they’re focusing on the election angle of it, and they’re showing their true colors.” . . . . .

About as cogent an analysis as is out there…
@ WSJ MarketWatch of all places… 😯

A verry pessimistic piece, only missing the mark on two points IMO,, one being an assumption no further Bankster Bailouts will be attempted (NTIM , IMO) the other a notion that it will give more power to duhpeepuhl in Washington…

As if that ruin is on today’s itinerary….
As if that silver-lining is meant for us. Oh I imagine denizens of Fort Resort-on-Potomac will come out once again offering their services. Tho they could really save themselves, the globe and the country a whole lot of trouble: because Because , Thanks TO “their services”, fewer and fewer still really give a fuck about em unless THEY TOO exit sewer with hands up……to waiting truck.

I mean when ya think about it, 😉 look at all they’ve accomplished in DC: They’ve succeeded in motivating the base of BOTH Parties to want to chop their fucking heads off.
With overwhelming support of Independent too.
Heackava Job, Republicrats! Here’s to ya, Donklephants!
Need a lift in the truck?!!?

I think the assumption of this piece is that bankster bailouts are gonna happen. That’s why every business writer pumps up the horrible, horrible things that will happen if banks aren’t given every penny of their bad loans back, with interest.

However, the main reason the US is invading Africa is no different from that which ignited the Vietnam war. It is China. In the world of self-serving, institutionalised paranoia that justifies what General David Petraeus, the former US commander and now CIA director, implies is a state of perpetual war, China is replacing al-Qaeda as the official American “threat”. When I interviewed Bryan Whitman, an assistant secretary of defence at the Pentagon last year, I asked him to describe the current danger to America. Struggling visibly, he repeated, “Asymmetric threats … asymmetric threats”. These justify the money-laundering state-sponsored arms conglomerates and the biggest military and war budget in history. With Osama bin Laden airbrushed, China takes the mantle.

Africa is China’s success story. Where the Americans bring drones and destabilisation, the Chinese bring roads, bridges and dams. What they want is resources, especially fossil fuels. With Africa’s greatest oil reserves, Libya under Muammar Gaddafi was one of China’s most important sources of fuel. When the civil war broke out and Nato backed the “rebels” with a fabricated story about Gaddafi planning “genocide” in Benghazi, China evacuated its 30,000 workers in Libya. The subsequent UN security council resolution that allowed the west’s “humanitarian intervention” was explained succinctly in a proposal to the French government by the “rebel” National Transitional Council, disclosed last month in the newspaper Liberation, in which France was offered 35 per cent of Libya’s gross national oil production “in exchange” (the term used) for “total and permanent” French support for the NTC. Running up the Stars and Stripes in “liberated” Tripoli last month, US ambassador Gene Cretz blurted out: “We know that oil is the jewel in the crown of Libyan natural resources!”

The de facto conquest of Libya by the US and its imperial partners heralds a modern version of the “scramble for Africa” at the end of the 19th century.
Like the “victory” in Iraq, journalists have played a critical role in dividing Libyans into worthy and unworthy victims. A recent Guardian front page carried a photograph of a terrified “pro-Gaddafi” fighter and his wild-eyed captors who, says the caption, “celebrate”. According to General Petraeus, there is now a war “of perception … conducted continuously through the news media”.
.

We also bring fucking fundie Xtianism… and encourage whatever local fundifoolishness is at hand as well. As we prattle about educating women and all the oher lies.

And China is very presnt in Afghanistan from what I read, building roads, big ones… planning on mining and whatever else.

I don’t really see either of us as benign… but that does not mean there is not a huge difference between open war invasion occupation (that would b the US) and being a possibly brutal busisness partner (that would be China)

[F]inance ministers – including George Osborne, the Chancellor – expressed frustration on Saturday that their emergency meeting could take no decisions of substance until Mrs Merkel and Mr Sarkozy had buried the hatchet.

“This Ecofin meeting has been reduced to an academic seminar, an exercise with absolutely no purpose,” complained one finance minister.

So pointless was the gathering, that Didier Reynders, the Belgian finance minister, left early to attend the world premiere of the new Tintin film, The Secret of the Unicorn. . . . .

We got ourselves , a Stage 5, metastisized, incarcerated, full blown BUMMER of Capitalist Tumor on our hands now.
Which they plan to treat with more Toity paper.
::

I’ve been poking around whats going on in Chicago.
Another 150 arrests tonight in Grant Park
Small wonder the Jew Boys that Own Obama want to keep the level of intensity there off national media coverage. If I had to guess now tho – , I’d say Chicago is likely to meltdown first.. Very intense, Very diverse, yet with increasingly confrontational -gasp- middle age minded to 55-ish whites looking to …like….break shit.

Well good luck to West Bank Rahm and his worn-out welcome among the neighbors. I bet that weasel gets up every day and prays that Bloomberg.can hold New Jerusalem.

The article is hilarious… supposedly Sarko is catty, downright bitchy actually, about Merkel behind her back (or so the story goes). Maybe he should repeat 7th grade… and not be allowed to sit with the mean girls this time.

oh HE IS! Why just yesterday, and with Carla having the baby and all, the poor dear, I heard – and he’s not really right for her by the way, ANYWAYS- if that wretched Mother of his< from GERMANY wasn't bad enough – the nerve of her all demure Lady Luftwaffe and all..

The Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, has said he would side with Pakistan in the event of war with the US in a surprising political twist that is likely to disconcert his western allies.

“If there is war between Pakistan and America, we will stand by Pakistan,” Karzai said in a television interview. He put his hand on his heart and described Pakistan as a “brother” country.

…

Karzai – who is scrambling to ensure his political future in advance of the US military drawdown in 2014 – needs Pakistani help to bring the Taliban to peace talks. In the event of any conflict, his army, which is wholly dependent on US money and training, would be in no position to back Pakistan.

Nevertheless, the interview with Geo, Pakistan’s largest network, was at stark variance with the tone set during a visit to the region by Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, and David Petraeus, the CIA director, days earlier. . . . . .

Lest the bloody cold ditch and truck-hitch-Sitch awaits him soon .
Not like the whole Western “Fighting Season” notion over there is , like, ah REAL~OFFICIAL Plenty of time – *and cash* – in
the Post Poppy Harvest Production Season.,
Clue! – – > They have heard of MULTITASKING!
Not to mention Millwrights!.
Who can handily switch production lines from one deadly powder to another….

I hear that OWS is teaching people to hate puppies and kittens and cookies (oh my!)

Is the Occupy Movement Anti-Democratic?
The global protests may actually undermine democracy rather than strengthen it.

Unintentionally, it sounds a lot like a scene from the Monty Python movie Life of Brian, the one in which Brian, who has been mistaken for the messiah, shouts out at the crowd, “You are all individuals!” The crowd shouts back: “We are all individuals!”
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Of course these international protests do have a few things in common, both with one another and with the anti-globalization movement that preceded them. They are similar in their lack of focus, in their inchoate nature, and above all in their refusal to engage with existing democratic institutions. In New York, marchers chanted, “This is what democracy looks like,” but, actually, this isn’t what democracy looks like. This is what freedom of speech looks like. Democracy looks a lot more boring. Democracy requires institutions, elections, political parties, rules, laws, a judiciary, and many unglamorous, time-consuming activities, none of which are nearly as much fun as camping out in front of St. Paul’s cathedral or chanting slogans on the Rue St. Martin in Paris.

There’s more by, but why bother, really? I’d rather re-read the cold-cereal box.

Mz. Applebaum obviously wouldn’t know democracy if it rode up naked on a horse and bit her on the ass. She does know what a top down hierarchy is, and she certainly comprehends the Bullshitstem that provides her a paycheck for dissembling nonsense to the witless…(/sigh)

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) – When Occupy Wall Street protesters took over two parks in Portland’s soggy downtown, they pitched 300 tents and offered free food, medical care and shelter to anyone. They weren’t just building, like so many of their brethren across the nation, a community to protest what they see as corporate greed.

They also created an ideal place for the homeless. Some were already living in the parks, while others were drawn from elsewhere to the encampment’s open doors.

Now, protesters from Portland to Los Angeles to Atlanta are trying to distinguish between homeless people who are joining their movement and those who are there for the amenities. When night falls in Portland, for instance, protesters have been dealing with fights, drunken arguments and the display of the occasional knife.

However, many homeless say the protests have helped them speak out against the economic troubles that sent them to the streets in the first place.

“The city wasn’t giving us what we needed,” said Joseph Gordon, 31, who trekked his way from Cincinnati two months ago and noted that there is nearly always enough food but never enough shelter. “You can’t feed your problem away. It took this camp to show people how it really is.”

It’s a piece about what might lead/get people into space, colonizing it, but he builds a foundation first:

How does being one of the 1% affect people?

A valuable conceptual tool for reasoning about wealth from the outside (I assume that you, like me, are part of the 99%) is the law of diminishing marginal utility.

Loosely put: if you are homeless and destitute in the USA and somebody hands you a $100 bill, that money can change your life. It’s enough to feed you for a couple of weeks to a month, to get you a new set of clothes, to buy time in a net cafe to search for a job online, to find shelter for a handful of nights during terrible weather.

But if you’re Warren Buffett and you spot a $100 bill lying on the ground while you’re out for your constitutional, it’s barely worth the time it takes to stoop to pick it up; the annual income of the fund Mr Buffett administers can be approximated to $1Bn, which works out at $31.70 per second. Of course, being Warren Buffett, I’d expect him to pick up the banknote; he didn’t get to be where he is today by ignoring free money. But it’s hardly going to change his life.

The diminishing marginal utility law dictates that the more money we have, the less utility we get from any additional incremental gain. And this bites the top 1% very hard indeed.

Examine the world around us from the point of view of someone with a net income of $5M/year …

Food is essentially free; you can afford to spend $1000 per meal, three meals a day, in the most expensive restaurants in London or Tokyo or Manhattan, and not make a dent in your income. (Oddly, even the hyper-rich don’t typically spend $1000 on lunch every day: a more realistic expectation might be to dine out expensively twice a week, for $100K/year, and have the best of everything in-house the rest of the time, with a live-in chef, for another $100K/year.)

Clothing is essentially free; want a different $5000 suit for every day of the week? That’s going to set you back only $35K! Spouse wants a dozen designer evening gowns a year? That’s still going to be on the low side of $200K.

Housing is essentially free; $1000/day will rent you a penthouse suite in a five star hotel in Manhattan, while your mortgageable income will let you buy a palace in the $5-20M range. (There are places where you may need to spend more than $20M to buy a house; but not many of them.)

You don’t have to do housework, interior decorating, cooking, driving, DIY home improvements, flight booking, or shopping (unless you want to). People can be hired to do any of the above for rates ranging from $15K to $100K per year, depending on the complexity of the job. And you earn $100K per week.

Travel: you have a car, or cars. Any cars you like. And a driver and a mechanic, either full-time employees or time-shared via an agency or a very exclusive garage. When you fly, you either go first class via the express security lane, or (airports are tedious) your driver takes you straight to the steps of the biz jet you hired. You are probably not rich enough to own a jet of your own, without making sacrifices elsewhere, but you can certainly afford to hire one once or twice a week.

Education: you, and/or your children, can afford any education you like, without having to go into debt to fund it. Even if the kids aren’t that bright, you can afford to hire tutors to push them in just the right direction. And the high end universities where the children of the rich go to learn how their social class networks usually look kindly on a donation in six digits to their trust.

Law: you can afford the best defense lawyers, period, and meet any reasonable bail conditions. There’s no guarantee that you can’t be prosecuted and imprisoned if you break the law — especially if you commit high crimes against the 0.5% (Bernie Madoff springs to mind) — but the system can be bent, if not broken, on your behalf.

Finally, there’s the point (unpleasant to contemplate for some) that income inequality can’t increase beyond the level it has already reached today without massive and unpleasant social consequences, some of which may be non-obvious side-effects of the drive towards a security state strong enough to protect the elite. By some estimates, 20-25% of the labour employed in the USA today is guard labour, work devoted to preventing the poor from expropriating the rich. Widespread application of anti-terrorism statutes to criminal enforcement suggests to me that the War on Terror has proven its utility as a useful pretext for expansion of the guard labour state; in light of which, reversal of Griswold v. Connecticut would pave the way for the deployment of ubiquitous surveillance techniques. (Which suggests a possible reason why the moneyed-elite faction of the Republican party are willing to tolerate the demands of the abortion-and-contraception-hating religious wing of the party.)

As much as American financial institutions have sought to minimize damage from Europe’s problems, the rescue of Dexia shows that there may be risks that are less known.

With a little last minute’ rumor-mongering tuhsay sgonna be okay for Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley…

While American financial institutions have sought to limit any damage by reducing their loans and thus lowering their direct exposure to Europe’s problems, the recent rescue of the Belgian-French bank Dexia shows that there are indirect exposures that are less known and understood — and potentially worrisome.

Dexia’s problems are not entirely caused by Europe’s debt crisis, but some issues in its case are a matter of broader debate. Among them are how much of a bailout banks should get, and the size of the losses they should take on loans that governments cannot repay.

Among Dexia’s biggest trading partners are several large United States institutions, including Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, according to two people with direct knowledge of the matter. To limit damage from Dexia’s collapse, the bailout fashioned by the French and Belgian governments may make these banks and other creditors whole — that is, paid in full for potentially tens of billions of euros they are owed. This would enable Dexia’s creditors and trading partners to avoid losses they might otherwise suffer without the taxpayer rescue.

Goldman lost 33 of it value in the last 6 months. Morgan Stanley , Citi et al, other similarly FUBAR’d results.
Prol is this – Let’s not be naive says the market knowing full well GS and MS bigs betting against their own gigs were fixin consolodating buybacks planned in conjunction with – and here’s the rub – the fix easily put in with the EU floating their sinking ships again…

Which ironically is proceeding swimmingly…
“Paid in Full” puffs the NYT? Oh LMAO.Haircuts of 60% for PIIGS bonds is the moderate view now.

Competing press conferences given by French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and by European Council President Herman van Rompuy and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso.

In line with general consensus on the meeting’s outcomes, leaders said they would wait until Wednesday to announce any plans for Greece, bank recapitalization, leveraging the EFSF, and changes to EU governance.

😆 Like, Wednesday! If ANYTHING! We’ll See!

Leaders also ruled out using the European Central Bank to help recapitalize the banks and leverage the European Financial Stability Fund, the rescue fund that will be used to stop the crisis from spreading. France’s Sarkozy had previously endorsed a larger role for the ECB to the dismay of Merkel and Germany. Expanding the ECB’s role would likely have violated standing EU treaties.

A little more on what’s been decided so far this weekend:

– Banks will first be asked to seek capital on their own, 😆
then seek money from their national governments, 😆
then finally the EFSF. The ECB will not be involved. 😯

So.

At Thursday's debate, Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren defended their Medicare for All plan. They faced criticism from several rivals, including Senator Amy Klobuchar, who described it as a "bad idea," and South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who claimed the bill shows Sanders and Warren do not "trust the American people."

At the third presidential primary debate in Houston, Texas, senator and 2020 candidate Elizabeth Warren called for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. Warren also spoke about her stance on U.S. trade policy and how "our trade policy in America has been broken for decades."

After being questioned about the crisis in Venezuela, Senator Bernie Sanders defended his vision of democratic socialism. "I agree with what goes on in Canada and in Scandinavia: guaranteeing healthcare to all people as a human right. I believe that the United States should not be the only major country on Earth not to provide paid family and medical le […]

Debate moderator Jorge Ramos of Univision grilled former Vice President Joe Biden over the Obama administration's deportation record. Biden refused to answer whether he did anything to prevent Obama from deporting a record 3 million people.

A U.S. House of Representatives panel on Friday demanded internal emails, detailed financial information and other company records from top executives of Amazon.com Inc., Facebook Inc, Apple Inc, and Alphabet Inc's Google, widening the antitrust probe of Big Tech.

U.S. Senator and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris on Friday asked a government watchdog to look into the Trump administration's decision to launch an antitrust probe into four automakers cooperating with California on tighter greenhouse gas emissions limits that Trump is trying to eliminate.

A lawyer for former FBI official Andrew McCabe pressed U.S. prosecutors on Friday to drop their politically sensitive case against him, citing reports that suggest they may be having trouble securing criminal charges.

Media

from Howl

I'm with you in Rockland
where we wake up electrified out of the coma
by our own souls' airplanes roaring over the
roof they've come to drop angelic bombs the
hospital illuminates itself imaginary walls collapse
O skinny legions run outside O starry
spangled shock of mercy the eternal war is
here O victory forget your underwear we're free
I'm with you in Rockland
in my dreams you walk dripping from a sea-
journey on the highway across America in tears
to the door of my cottage in the Western night

October 7 1955

"a remarkable collection of angelson one stage reading their poetry"
"I think Allen Ginsberg standing up there reading - putting himself on the line - was one of the two bravest things I've ever seen. Remember, it was '55. People had crew cuts, and they looked at you like you were misplaced cannon fodder. The country was being run by Luce publications. It was a dangerous, cold, ugly time, and it was scary. . .
In all our memories no one had been so outspoken in poetry before. We had gone beyond a point of no return. None of us wanted to go back to the grey, chill, militaristic silence, to the intellectual void - to the land without poetry - to the spiritual drabness. We wanted to make it new and we wanted to invent it and the process of it as we went into it. We wanted voice and we wanted vision."
-Michael McClure

Democrats…

Same as goddam fucking forever.
Over and over, in election year after election year, GE and MidTerms both… the Dems start to purr and preen, they stretch luxuriously - at just being TOLD they are going to win [...]
It never fails.
... in February of 2002, looking over the already joyless congressional stragglers willing to be drafted for duty… they barely dreamed, yet, it was even possible (Howard, a different person then, had not arrived to say it could be done)… but one thing was clear, we could not rely on the party to swing it. Could not. You could smell it, they would screw the deal. And I am not talking about Howard and primary issues here. By the end, that was a passing political story. Chuck it on the heap.
[...]
Upshot? The Republicans make it thru. They hold on.